Board of Directors

Dr. Chiung-Mei Lu is a board member. Dr. Lu obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Science from TaiPei Medical University and received her Ph.D. from UAB (1991) in Neuroscience. After postdoctoral training at UAB, she joined Research Genetics to lead their microarray development team in charge of customer support and training. After Research Genetics was acquired by Invitrogen, Dr. Lu joined Genaco to serve as COO. Under Dr. Lu’s management, Genaco excelled with limited funding and resources. She directed a team to work with the FDA consultants to build Quality Systems for the company and helped prioritize research and development projects and coordinate marketing efforts.

Ms. Sue Whitehead is a board member of iCubate. Ms. Whitehead received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Texas State University. Ms. Whitehead serves on the board of Diatherix Laboratories, a provider of clinical laboratory services for detection of infectious diseases. Ms. Whitehead also serves on the HudsonAlpha Foundation Board, which helps ensure long-term growth, sustainability and security for HudsonAlpha’s future of providing improvement of human health and quality of life. A seasoned investor in life sciences start-up companies, Ms. Whitehead provides near and long term financial strategic counsel for the company.

Mr. Tom Young is a board member of iCubate. Mr. Young is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kord Technologies, a consulting and technical services company with various Department of Defense and NASA customers and contracts. Prior to founding Kord, Mr. Young was the Chief Executive Officer of Qualitest/Vintage Pharmaceuticals, one of the nation’s largest drug companies. Prior to joining Qualitest, he served as Executive Vice-President at Intergraph Corporation, a Huntsville-based software and services company. Additionally, Mr. Young was Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-AL).

Dr. Jian Han is the founder of iCubate. Currently, he serves as Chairman of the Board and as the Corporation’s President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Han obtained his M.D. from Suzhou Medical College in China and his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He became an Assistant Professor at UAB in 1994 and served as Clinical Molecular Laboratory Director. He is a board-certified clinical molecular geneticist. In 1996, he started a biotech company, Genaco Biomedical Products, Inc. Genaco developed a multiplex molecular assay for profiling pathogens associated with respiratory infections. After a series of successful development and validation studies, Genaco’s core technology, tem-PCR on the Luminex platform gained market recognition and ultimately won the Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation and Leadership award and Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation award. In 2006, Qiagen acquired Genaco. Following the sale of Qiagen, Dr. Han joined the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and became the first Faculty Investigator. At HudsonAlpha, he developed the next generation multiplex PCR technology, the arm-PCR method. He retained many of the talented employees from Genaco and recruited exceptional engineers to develop the iCubate instrument platform.